Round 3

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER

VS

TRANSPARENT

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I’ve been looking forward to this match up since reviewing each of these pilots. These have been two of the best quality shows of the new fall season. So far, the shows we have compared have been unequally matched, with one show easily blowing the other out of contention. How to Get Away with Murder and Transparent, in my thinking, were worthy adversaries. Key term: were.

After watching the second episode of How to Get Away with Murder, I soon lost faith that this would be a good match up. The pilot debuted strong and I was ready to move full-steam ahead. But somewhere between the pilot and the second episode the story lost the steam it did such a seamless job of creating. The first episode interspersed scenes from beginning of the story (the present) with flash-forwards of a murder taking place 2 ½ months in the future. The second episode did the same thing but it was clunky, poorly intertwined and confusing. This show got formulaic way too fast. The second episode barely moves the plot along and is thematically no different than the first. Viola Davis is a powerhouse as Professor Annalise Keating, but even that can’t save it from the attempt to make the second episode a carbon copy of the pilot, a method that only serves to degrade its quality.

Unlike its adversary, the second episode of Transparent picks up the baton handed off by the first episode and progresses forward. The subtle differences between the way Jeffrey Tambor portrays Mort and they way he does Maura suggest that the things we assume about gender are not just biological, but performative. Judith Light (ANGELA!*) walks a fine line between real person and stereotype, which is a fun platform to watch when it’s done right. There isn’t even enough space to mention all the interesting developments going on with the adult children or how well they are flowering into their characters. This show is about a family figuring out who they are together and independently and its doing a remarkable job of showing us how they get there.

It’s almost frustrating. We here at Popfilter would prefer a little healthy competition to get our readership interested in our pseudosport, the Fall TV Challenge. Unfortunately for us, Transparent is in a different league than the other shows in the bracket. Its the Yankees and the Patriots combined. But there are 12 more shows we still haven’t seen, and it’s entirely possible that we have a late in the fall season sleeper hit. I hope.

-Stephanie Rose

TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE FLASH VS KINGDOM!!!

* If you were born after 1990, she’s a character from Who’s the Boss with Tony Danza, you fetus.